Thursday, January 29, 2015

Redux: A Reminiscence of My Culinary Life in 1,200 Words or Less

BY BRYAN LAVERY

When I was a young teenager, our friends and family reacted like we
were moving to Mars when we left Toronto to move to our cottage on Rice Lake.
Our parents fulfilled a long-held dream when they purchased the cottage with a
hilltop location and an acre of cedar forest backing on to the Ouse River. The
site had previously been part of much larger farm acreage.

The cottage was a prefabricated shell with no amenities, in my unformed mind a
zeitgeist in the back-to-the-earth spirit of the times, a handyman’s special
that we idealized and had the potential to be transformed into our dream home.

At first, I thought we had landed in paradise, taking a cue from my parents who
behaved like we had inherited heaven on earth. It was a convincing gambit that
betrayed no hint of the hardships and sacrifices ahead. We briefly emulated the
type of television family that enjoyed the solidarity of breaking bread
together and took deep satisfaction from cooking meals over an open-fire in the
moonlight.

Our parents purchased an old cast iron, wood-burning stove at a farm sale
auction that had to be moved on a flat- bed pulled by a tractor. The stove was
connected by a stove pipe to a temperamental flue that vented the smoke
outside. The stove was both a heat source and cooker and would rarely burn
unattended for more than a couple of hours. Gathering and chopping wood became
a necessity that seemed to dominate our lives. If the embers were allowed to
extinguish no amount of stoking, bellows work or fanning with a newspaper would
resuscitate the fire. It was on this volatile stove that I became a
fledgling cook. I was most in my element in the kitchen or hunting and pecking
on an ancient typewriter in my bedroom with a thesaurus by my side.

The experience of moving to our cottage was like going camping for an extended
period of time. Like any make-believe, reality often crushes expectations. When
the honeymoon was over, practicality took over, and after several months the
“everything is awful” phase replaced our pioneering spirit. For a teenager
accustomed to the independence of urban life and navigating a large city on
transit the realization that we were isolated came as a culture shock, the
effects delayed but inevitable.

At fourteen, I proved myself equal to stand a full days work. My first job was
pumping gas and clerking at Heffernan’s, which was the only general store and
one of few gas stations along a stretch of Highway 7 between Peterborough and
the village of Norwood. Heffernan’s served a captive audience of hard-working
farmers who purchased their weekly food stuffs and farming supplies as well as
other passersby on route to small towns or the near north. It was as a
side-kick in the kitchen at the back of the store that I was indoctrinated into
the art and science of baking and in retrospect this contributed to my
life-long interest in cooking.

My formative years were spent managing the kitchens of the Keg and the
Corkscrew chains, learning the business side of the industry when salad bars
and steak and lobster were the very definition of middlebrow cuisine. Despite
the lack of innovation in these kitchens I became an avid reader of cookbooks,
the recipes were precise and I attempted to follow them to the letter.

In my early twenties, I was fortunate to have several mentors with a dedicated
interest in gastronomy and was given the opportunity to work with talented
chefs and restaurateurs all with difficult temperaments and strong skill sets
that helped me develop a culinary backbone. My real education and passion for
the culinary arts began while working at a series of French restaurants in
Toronto that were bastions of haute cuisine. The way I saw it, French
seemed to be the only serious way to dine. Initially, I was an ardent student
of regional French cuisine but after trips to Italy, I had to acknowledge that
I was more inspired by regional Italian cooking and eventually I moved beyond
France as my primary focus of interest.

As far as I can remember, travels in Europe and my introduction to food writers
MFK Fisher and Elizabeth David were how my passion for food writing was
incubated. In any case, it was Italy where I first encountered giant turtles
fated for soup pots, wild game, a variety of unusual feathered birds and
truffle hunting dogs. I enjoyed scouting the open-air food markets in Pisa and
Florence and the Rialto market on Venice’s Canal Grande. The Italian market was
my nirvana, with its abundant varieties of fresh and saltwater fish and shellfish,
the night markets piled high with seasonal produce, fresh fungi and obscure
local cheeses.

I was cooking at at a dinner club in Chandler’s Ford in Hampshire, England,
just as mad cow disease was evolving from a cryptic veterinary conundrum into
an epidemic affecting 120,000 cattle. Speculation about mad cow’s relationship
to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans had created a state of panic. I
realized that I had been naive to put my confidence in the perceived safety of
our food chain. It was about this time that I became politicized about food
security and began questioning our food and farming policies.

A decade later I was chosen as part of a contingent to partake in a culinary
journey with seven Canadian chefs to the region of Emilia-Romagna in Italy. This was my
first introduction to “Slow Food” and the movement to safeguard traditional
regional specialties, time- honoured techniques and farm-to-table cuisine. It
was on this trip that I had an epiphany about food boasting of regional
authenticity and became a dedicated proponent of culinary tourism and Ontario's homegrown terroir.

In retrospect, I have had a rewarding career in the culinary arts and am
gratified to be associated with establishing, owning or in partnership with
many great restaurants that became a way of life but more importantly an
ideology. More recently my involvement with the Western Fair Farmers` and
Artisans` Market gave me a platform to lead and support innovative initiatives
in the community during a transformational time. I have always felt that my true calling has been as a communicator. It has taken me many years to find my authentic voice.

It was not that long ago that we lacked dedicated local food media to report on the local food community. One of my goals is to continue to have role in
sustaining, mentoring and promoting talent and a vibrant culinary community.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Ontario Culinary Tourist

I am a
writer, culinary columnist and food and social media editor in London and
Toronto, Ontario. A chef, former restaurateur and hospitality consultant with
over thirty years in the industry, my work has appeared in a variety of print
and on-line publications. I also freelance written editorial and visual content
for tourism and corporate clients.